Author: Sharon Cummins (Sharon Cummins)

To the Victor Belong the Spoils

The Kennebunks have been blessed with reputable historians since European fishermen found this place sparsely populated by native families early in the 17th Century, but their versions of our stories don’t always agree 100%. The area between the Kennebunk River and the Mousam River, which was originally called The Cape Porpoise River, was at first...

January 11, 2024January 11, 2024

Throwback Thursday

I was thrilled when Kate Kelley, The Photo Angel® sent The Kennebunkport Historical Society an old picture of Dock Square Kennebunkport. Kate’s passion is in reuniting old photographic portraits she finds at antique stores with the subject’s descendants by tracing their genealogy. This time, because the picture she found was of a Kennebunkport location, we...

January 4, 2024January 4, 2024

Forefathers Inn

I’ve heard a lot about Forefathers Inn since I moved to Kennebunkport in Y2K but some of the facts about its ultimate fate are still fuzzy for me. Maybe you can help. Tea houses were all the rage in the Kennebunks, especially during Prohibition. Forefathers Spring House, later known for serving up a different kind...

December 28, 2023December 28, 2023

Kennebunkport Methodist Church that stood on Maine St., next to the Bank-turned Customs House-turned Library from 1835-1960

The Kennebunkport Methodist Parish needed a place to hold services in the river village of Kennebunkport. Oliver Bourne made his lot on Maine Street next to the Custom House available for this purpose. The modest one-story Methodist Chapel was dedicated in April of 1835. In 1862, the one-story structure was raised up. The first floor...

December 21, 2023December 21, 2023

Kennebunkport Hutchins Letters donated by the Westbrook Historical Society

Mark Swett of the Westbrook Historical Society contacted me at the archives several weeks ago. He found some very interesting Kennebunkport Hutchins letters mixed in with a donation Westbrook Historical Society received that had been stored away for many years in someone’s attic. “Some of the letters between members of the Moses Hutchins family [who...

December 14, 2023December 14, 2023

Ward Family Houses in Kennebunkport

The Wards are one of those Kennebunkport families that keep popping up in my local history research. Nathaniel Ward moved here from Salem, Massachusetts in 1789. He married ferryman Shephen Harding’s daughter. When Lydia Harding Ward died, part of her father’s property near the mouth of the Kennebunk River was sold by the Ward Family...

December 7, 2023December 7, 2023

I Love My Job

A yellow stagecoach on sleigh runners turned up in Barnstead, NH recently after having been stored away in a trailer there for decades. The gentleman upon whose property it had been abandoned contacted me at the Kennebunkport Historical Society to inquire about it since Kennebunkport was lettered above the doors on both sides of the...

November 16, 2023November 16, 2023

Veterans Day Edition – Thank You for Your Service!

There is a monument at the Cape Porpoise Pier honoring soldiers and sailors who served in the American Revolution and a plaque in Cape Porpoise Square honoring veterans of WWII, Korean, and Vietnam conflicts. WWI Veterans were honored upon their return to Kennebunkport in 1919. An all-encompassing Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Eagle perches proud in...

November 9, 2023November 9, 2023

Then It Happened

Kudos to L. Blake Baldwin of Video Creations in Kennebunk for converting this 16mm film from our collection. It was produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture after the Maine Fire of October 1947 to warn folks to prevent forest fires, “It happened in Maine so don’t let it happen to you.” Keep an eye...

November 2, 2023November 2, 2023

Jane Morgan’s Kennebunkport Playhouse Ghosts

“I was awakened from a sound sleep and saw this figure of a Quaker lady surrounded by a gray haze. She glided by the foot of the bed and went out the door,” recalled musical star Jane Morgan’s good friend Muriel Pierce to a reporter in the mid-1960s. The newspaper man and his photographer had...

October 26, 2023October 26, 2023